YOU’LL be seeing a lot more of Breeza girl Maddy Coleman, pictured, in the months ahead as she becomes the face of a new campaign by one of Australia’s most high-profile senators.
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Miss Coleman appeared on the front page of The Leader back in February for a story about Liverpool Plains Youth, a group formed to oppose the proposal for an open-cut coal mine in the area.
What started as a Facebook page though has now gone much bigger, with Senator Jacqui Lambie, below, to use the photo on T-shirts and posters as part of her opposition to the approval of the Shenhua Watermark project.
She has been very outspoken in the months since the mine was given the green light by federal Environment
Minister Greg Hunt, speaking out on national television and radio and even challenging New England MP Barnaby Joyce in a clip that appeared on her website.
Miss Coleman doesn’t relish the opportunity of being on a T-shirt or poster, but says if that’s going to spread the word further, then so be it.
“We obviously hoped our message would go big and get heaps of attention, but I never expected this,” she said.
“It’s exciting though to be getting it out there, to the cities and to a wider audience.”
Ms Lambie’s office has indicated she is keen to meet the young farmers campaigning to stop the mine and to tour the area, an invitation they had accepted, Miss Coleman said.
As for the photo that caught the senator’s attention, it was an impromptu moment.
A keen photographer, Miss Coleman is more comfortable behind the lens, but when she and friend Hugh Pursehouse decided to get a bird’s-eye view of the plains, he grabbed her camera at one point and snapped off a couple of shots.
“Now it’s his shot that’s been picked up,” she laughed.
It doesn’t matter though to the young farmers who call the Liverpool Plains home – you can’t buy the publicity they’re about to receive.
“It’s just brilliant. We need people who are going to speak up for us and fight for us and spread the message,” Miss Coleman said.